Monday, February 12, 2018

Political Economy Research will be publishing series of articles shining the light on North Korean achievements in the last 20 years following the devastation suffered in the 1990's and how they have applied science to solve their problems.

By Kim Soobok (Translation and edits by Hyun Lee)

After the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the 1990’s, North Korea
lost eighty percent of its trade and saw a drastic decline in its ability to
import oil. Imagine trying to maintain a living after a sudden drop in your own
income by eighty percent. It’s an imperfect analogy, but it might give us an
idea of the direness of the country’s situation back then.

In July, 1994, in
the midst of this crisis, Kim Il-sung, the supreme leader of the North Korean
people since the days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, suddenly passed
away. On top of it all, a series of major floods devastated the country on an
unprecedented scale in the summers of 1995 and 1997.

Eighty percent of
North Korea is mountains, and the extraction of underground coal and minerals
is North Korea’s industrial artery. It needed to quickly pump out water to
restore its thousands of underground mines devastated by the floods, but the
country’s energy crisis was already at its worst and there was no electricity
to operate the pumps.

The coal-based
synthetic fiber vinalon was the base material for most of North Korea’s
clothing, but without coal, the country could no longer produce textile. With
iron ore also underwater, steel production came to a standstill. But the most
difficult was the inability to farm to feed the people.

Without fuel, the
country couldn’t pump water to irrigate the rice fields. And the decline in oil
imports meant North Korea could no longer produce fertilizer based on naphta, a
byproduct of oil refinery. This devastated North Korean agriculture and froze
its grain production, and marked the beginning of the period known as the
“Arduous March.” It took North Korea many years to restore its coal mines and
normalize production.

Readers in the
United States may remember Hurricane Sandy, which swept through parts of New
Jersey and New York in October 2012. It fell tree branches that had already
been weighed down by an early snowfall. One branch cut through a power line as
it fell and caused an explosion at a substation, which led to a region-wide
blackout that lasted for days. My house had no electricity for eleven days. We
couldn’t cook and had no heat, so everyone in my family became sick. We lit
candles and spent our evenings shivering under the covers.

Gas stations had no
electricity to operate their pumps. The few that had generators to remain open
had endless lines of people.

This happened in
the United States, which considers itself the most advanced nation, due to a
felled tree branch after a few days of heavy winds. Imagine the damage suffered
by the North Koreans when the entire country was submerged under water. With no
food nor heat in a country where the winters are long and bitter, what did the
North Korean people experience?

Meanwhile, South
Korea flaunted its status as among the world’s top ten wealthiest countries,
and its people frivoled away disposable income on overseas vacations. South
Korea’s nouveau-riche reveled in idle leisure at golf courses and bars in the
Korean autonomous region of Yanbian in China. The then-Kim Young-sam
administration in the south put all means of pressure on Japan to abandon its
pledge to send 50,000 tons of rice as humanitarian aid to the north. The United
States and South Korea prepared for North Korea’s collapse through its numerous
joint military exercises, and South Korean intelligence encouraged the media to
circulate the prediction that North Korea would collapse within three weeks or
three months, at most three years.

North Koreans
don’t talk much about their hardship during the Arduous March. What they went
through is unimaginable to the rest of the world, but they have great pride in
the fact that they survived the brink of collapse and achieved what they
consider a phoenix-like resurrection through sheer grit and adherence to their
national philosophy of self-reliance. They have great faith in their leadership
and look to the victory of their previous generation’s armed struggle against
colonial Japan as inspiration for their current struggle.

After sixteen
long years of hardship, North Korea finally began to normalize production in
all national industries in 2008-2009. It declared 2012, which marked the
centennial of Kim Il-sung’s birth, the year of “opening the door toward
becoming a strong and prosperous nation.”

North Korea’s
seemingly miraculous recovery from the brink of collapse was the result of key
policy decisions made by then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who, amidst his
own battle with cancer, steered the country to focus on developing science and
technology to rebuild its industries based on the philosophy of self-reliance.
Even at the height of its economic crisis, North Korea, thinking ahead, decided
to tighten its belt and allocate its limited resources to developing technology
rather than short-term food purchases. At an onsite inspection of an
underground automatic lathe factory in 1995, Kim envisioned not just restoring
the country’s ailing factories but redesigning and equipping them with
cutting-edge technology.

Self-reliance and
the Importance of Science and Technology

The principle of
self-reliance–that one can and should solve one’s problems utilizing one’s own
resources and skills and not become dependent on foreign powers–was the guiding
philosophy of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-sung since the Korean
people’s anti-colonial struggle against the Japanese. And it has been the
country’s guiding philosophy ever since. North Korea’s experience during the
Korean War–when countries that had pledged support didn’t come through with
supplies of armaments in its moment of desperate need–reaffirmed its belief
that to guarantee its survival, it cannot rely on others and needs to develop
its own resources.

Kim Jong-un,
following the steps of his father and grandfather, places the highest priority
on the development of science and technology as the engine behind the
construction of a “strong socialist nation” and regards the scientist’s
blueprint as the key to improving the economic livelihood of the people. In
2013, the central committee of North Korea’s Workers Party announced an outline
of its plans for “science and technology development in the Kim Jong-un era”
and its “Byungjin line,” i.e. the simultaneous development of its nuclear
deterrent and economy. It outlined the following top priorities the country
should solve through science and technology:

4. Modernizing the
people’s economy and achieving automation and integration of production using
computer numerical control (CNC) technology; and

5. Making science
the basis for all aspects of society, such as economic management, education,
healthcare, athletics, land management, etc.

North Korea’s
stated aim is to become a society where people no longer sweat and toil to eek
out the bare minimum but live comfortably through the fruits of scientific and
technological advances. Kim Jong-un, in keeping with his father’s motto, “Plant
your feet on your land and keep your eyes on the world,” instructed party
members to upgrade the nation’s science and technology to a
“globally-competitive level” and acquire cutting-edge know-how in high-tech
industries, such as information, nanotechnology and bio-engineering.

Scientists in
North Korea are highly valued for their service to the country and receive
preferential treatment. Under Kim Jong-un’s leadership, North Korea has built
brand new residential complexes for the teaching staff of Kim Il-sung
University and the Kim Chaek Institute of Technology and has dedicated whole
streets with apartment complexes for scientists involved in the Unha Rocket and
satellite launch programs. The country has also built a resort area solely
reserved for scientists at Lake Yeonpung near the city of Gaechon.

“Turn all people
into scientific and technical talents” is a national slogan in North Korea. The
party encourages all people, including workers and farmers, to become
scientific thinkers and innovators in their respective fields. The National
Academy of Science, the National Academy of Agricultural Science, and the
National Academy of Medical Science work in close collaboration with producers
in basic and essential industries to enhance their technological capacities and
enable workers and farmers to innovate new technology.

In the next three
parts, I will discuss the role of science in increasing grain production in
North Korea. Key requisites for grain production are fertilizer, water,
seed and land. Actually, the person who tills the land is the most important,
but that’s for another discussion. Part two focuses on North Korea’s two-decade
struggle to get water to the fields, and part three on advances in fertilizer
production. Seed and land are subjects for further research should I have the
opportunity to travel to North Korea again in the future.